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Federici, I

GRILES Romantically linked to two women in DOI, both involved in scandals. Wooldridge and Italia F:

Federici,who was an aide to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton during her 1996 Senate bid, reportedly served as a go-between linking Griles and Abramoff. Federici is president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, a group founded by Norton and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist."

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Italia Federici founded the Council of Republican for Environmental Advocacy with Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Norton brought Federici into DOI as a political aide. Federici was also romantically linked to J. Steven Griles, who she introduced to Jack Abramoff, a college friend. Abramoff directed about $500,000 to CREA in exchange for political favors from Federici, stating in an email that Federici’s group was “our access to Norton.” Federici was eventually charged with tax evasion and obstruction during Senate investigations of the Abramoff scandal. In 2007, she was sentenced to two months in a half way house and four years of probation.

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He was sentenced to a ten months imprisonment after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. Days after his guilty plea, he would marry his DOI subordinate Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who was part of an ethics scandal involving the purchase of a home with ConocoPhillips lobbyist.

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4/15 superpac

Mike Snyder, a locally famous ex-anchorman for Dallas-Fort Worth’s NBC station, was running media strategy. Janeé Hill, a motivational speaker, handled outreach.

Randy Hill, Janeé’s husband, was hired to be the PAC’s executive director. Along with his business acumen – Hill once said his peanut transport system moved 80 percent of the nation’s crop – he was well connected. Then-Gov. Rick Perry had appointed him to the state’s emerging technologies committee.

Hill’s father had been Wal-Mart’s chief ethics officer, and was invited to join the PAC’s board. Gary Hill found the PAC’s patron to be “very eccentric.” When they first met, he recalled in an interview, Ken Davis told him the nametag on his sport coat was on the wrong side, ripped it off and fixed it onto the other side. But he joined the board anyway.

Patrick Davis, the group’s senior consultant, had the most political experience among the hires. He served as the political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2004 cycle and had helped run dozens of local, state and national campaigns.

Through his lawyer, Davis said he was attracted to the Fort Worth group because the national debt had long been an interest of his. And his style appealed to the oilman. He would often kick off conference calls by leading a prayer, asking for the Lord’s guidance in being responsible stewards of their patron’s money.

But very quickly, fissures appeared.

In his July memo to the board, Randy Hill alleged irregularities in Patrick Davis’ reimbursement requests. He wasn’t turning in receipts, Hill wrote, and some expenses didn’t track, such as a bill for an Iowa hotel stay that had been prepaid and a bill for a plane ticket even though Davis had driven to his destination.

Hill also questioned whether events organized by Davis were all they claimed to be. At an Iowa phone bank, Hill said, a caller admitted they were just “pretending to make phone calls” for the benefit of the campaign’s video cameras.

Hill was particularly concerned about Patrick Davis’ associate. She was combative with the rest of the staff and acting erratically, he said, so he began looking into her past.

Her name was Italia Federici. A decade earlier, Federici figured in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which contributed to the resignation of House Majority Leader Tom Delay and led to the criminal convictions of 21 people, including a House member who admitted taking bribes.

Federici was accused of using her position as head of a conservative environmental advocacy group to serve as intermediary between Abramoff and her friend, Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles. Abramoff funneled $500,000 to her group, offered her box seats to NFL games and paid for her meals and parties at his D.C. restaurant. In return, she allegedly exploited her romantic relationship with Griles to get Abramoff inside information and to lobby for his tribal clients.

When she testified before the Senate Indian Affairs committee, North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan accused her of being involved in “one of the most disgusting tales of greed and avarice” and mocked her denial of a quid pro quo: ”I come from a really small town, but I think I can spot a pretty big lie from time to time.”

Federici pleaded guilty in 2007 to tax evasion and obstructing a Senate investigation. She was given probation for her crimes and moved back to Colorado, where she’d lived before Washington.

There, her problems continued. The IRS accused her of being delinquent on more than $250,000, which her lawyer said was the result of a penalty assessed against her in connection with the Abramoff scandal. Her Boulder landlord told ProPublica she kicked her out for not paying several months of rent. “She doesn’t have clear boundaries between truth and fiction,” said the landlord, Diane Dvorin.

Through her attorney, Federici said she was truthful and moved out promptly after not being able to make rent.

In 2012, Federici and Patrick Davis met while working to promote Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign in Colorado. Davis had moved to Colorado and set up his own consulting firm after finishing his stint at the Republican senatorial committee.

Davis’ work was at times controversial after he left Washington. In 2008 he led a nonprofit that backed the presidential campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. It was blasted by other conservatives for allegedly making robo-calls to voters in multiple states that masqueraded as polls and suggested that a rival candidate, Sen. John McCain, “voted to use unborn babies in medical research.” The group was widely denounced, including by Huckabee’s campaign.

While he was working for Vote2ReduceDebt, Davis was also running the campaign of Annette Bosworth, a South Dakota physician making a bid for the Senate. Bosworth, who got 6 percent of the vote in the Republican primary last year, faces trial on a dozen felony counts of perjury and filing false statements in connection with allegedly forged names on nominating petitions.

Before Davis was running Bosworth’s campaign, records show he got paid a consulting fee by a PAC that boosted one of her opponents, a fact Bosworth’s attorney said was never disclosed to her.

Through his attorney, Davis said the relationship was disclosed, and that the calls on behalf of Huckabee were not push polls, but rather educational calls. The attorney said Davis had no knowledge of the alleged crimes committed by Bosworth.

In his July 2014 memo, Randy Hill asked for Davis and Federici to be fired.

The next day, Patrick Davis wrote a memo of his own to the board. In it, he alleged that after a June 5 Vote2ReduceDebt rally, as they drove to the Midland, Texas airport, Hill told him about a secret plan.

At the time, Hill was in talks with television executives to create a reality show about his quest to start a NASCAR racing team. He already had a website billing himself as “The Entrepreneur… Chasing the Dream,” encouraging visitors to follow along as he recruited a driver, sponsors and a spot on the racing circuit. He told colleagues this would be good publicity for the PAC – he’d emblazon his racecars with the Vote2ReduceDebt logo and take them on tour.

But Patrick Davis alleged that Hill took it a step further in their conversation. In order to start filming, Hill said, he needed to get a team together, and that required money he didn’t have. Hill missed his first deadline with NBC, and though he was granted an extension, time was running out.

By Davis’ account, Hill offered him a trade of sorts. He would make Patrick Davis “a character in his reality TV show.” And Patrick Davis would help Hill get $4 million out of the PAC: half a million for PAC promotions, and the rest going toward racing expenses including drivers and pit crews. Ken Davis, recently hospitalized, would be told the money was going towards legitimate get-out-the-vote operations.

In his memo, Patrick Davis wrote that he would never go along with such a scheme because it would have “required lying to Mr. Ken Davis which was something I was not going to do.”

The board and Ken Davis had to decide whom to believe. Patrick Davis warned the leadership that if they sided with Hill, they would risk future disaster. “In other cases where I’ve occasionally been ignored, clients have really created problems for themselves,” he wrote.

For her part, Federici began pressuring Snyder, who was in charge of media strategy, and the PAC’s attorney, Chris Gober, who was looking into the allegations. One evening in July, she sent Gober a barrage of text messages. She demanded he turn over video from a PAC event she believed would play in their favor. He emailed the texts the same evening to Ken Davis.

“SECURE THE EVIDENCE YOU’VE BEEN NOTIFIED FOR A MONTH EXISTS,” Federici texted in all caps, according to the email. “If you think I’m cowed in any way, think again. I will ferociously expose you and anyone else I feel is complicit in destroying documentation about the fleecing (of) this family.”

“Screw with this PAC at your peril…Who do you think you are?… If you want to sue me/us… Do it! Otherwise, do your fucking job and stop being Mike Snyder’s bitch.”

“WTF. I could care less about your Harvard ‘creds,’” she continued, even though the attorney said he didn’t respond. “Do. Your. Job. We asked for docs and recorded material weeks ago. How impotent are you? Or is it criminal. Your choice.”

In an interview, Hill said the reality TV show scam was a figment of Patrick Davis’ imagination, one that Davis fabricated to distract from his own fraud. He said the board decided to side with him, voting to fire Davis and Federici.

But he said he was called into Ken Davis’ office and berated.

“Nobody fires anybody until I tell ‘em to,” the oilman said, according to Hill.

That afternoon, Hill said, Patrick Davis flew in and met privately with Ken Davis. The next day Hill was fired.

Patrick Davis remained and his influence grew. According to records and interviews, he pushed for multiple six-figure payments to organizations run by him or his close associates.

He convinced the PAC to hire a Virginia company called ccAdvertising for calls to voters, at a price of about $230,000, records show. Davis’ attorney, Cleta Mitchell, said that Davis has a “long term business and personal relationship” with the company’s owner. Mitchell declined to respond to questions about whether Davis received personal benefit from the contract.

At least three of the outside companies Davis recommended to Vote2ReduceDebt were run by one of his business associates, Joel Arends, an attorney and political operative based in South Dakota. Davis and Arends have known each other for two decades through various Republican campaigns. Most recently, they had worked together on the South Dakota primary in which their candidate got indicted and blamed Arends for the allegedly falsified filings.

Hill said that one proposal from Patrick Davis involved a cross-country bus tour using a company linked to Arends that was so obscure it didn’t have a website. On another occasion, Davis pushed for the PAC’s printing services to be handled by Arends. Davis said through his lawyer that he felt Arends would be faster and cheaper than other options.

Vote2ReduceDebt didn’t go with Patrick Davis’ suggestions on either of those jobs, but did heed his advice when choosing who to hire for a $200,000 contract to produce voter rallies. Davis again picked Arends, who ran a company called Red State Productions. Davis’s lawyer said in a statement that Red State “is a skilled political campaign services provider with years of experience and excellent results over many campaigns.”

While Arends had worked with campaigns in the past, Red State’s website, which displays photos of big political rallies featuring Republican stars such as Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, was created a couple of days before Red State pitched the $200,000 deal to Vote2ReduceDebt, domain registration records show. The company was incorporated in South Dakota a few days after the pitch.

Red State’s events, according to the website, “are widely attended, photographed and reported.” A search of online databases turned up no previous record of payments to Red State Productions by a candidate or political committee. The D.C. number for the company has since been disconnected. The address listed on its website is for a service on Washington’s K Street lobbying corridor that provides mail drops and temporary office space.

Vote2ReduceDebt staffers were not pleased with Red State’s work, according to a lawsuit the super PAC filed in December to get the money back. One of the firm’s main responsibilities was promoting rallies and getting people there. But most of the people who attended their rallies, the PAC alleged, were paid Vote2ReduceDebt staffers, with one rally only drawing seven outsiders.

Arends’ attorney did not respond to questions from ProPublica. His company has sued Vote2ReduceDebt for terminating the contract, and harming its reputation with future clients.

CLETA Mitchell, Davis’ attorney, said the events Red State organized were “very successful,” including one attended by more than 250 people and others that drew volunteers, elected officials and local activists.

Arends and Patrick Davis “are not in business together,” said Mitchell. Asked if Davis received a personal benefit from the work the PAC gave to Arends, Mitchell said: “If there were any business arrangements with any vendors, those arrangements would have been (and were) fully disclosed.”

Another move by Patrick Davis raised questions among some PAC colleagues. He secured payments of about $410,000 from Vote2ReduceDebt – roughly a seventh of the total funds raised by the super PAC - to another PAC, one he and Federici had created in 2013.

Until the payment from Vote2ReduceDebt, their PAC, called Person to Person, had almost no contributions or activities. According to an invoice, other internal records and a person with knowledge of the transactions, the money was paid in expectation of a service: Person to Person would recruit 320 volunteers for door-knocking and phone work in Vote2ReduceDebt’s eight target states.

But Patrick Davis reported the money to the FEC as a contribution, not a fee for service. According to Noble, the former FEC attorney who reviewed the filings for ProPublica, that distinction allowed Person to Person to do whatever it wanted with the money and pay no taxes on it.

Person to Person quickly began spending its windfall. According to federal disclosure records compiled by the OpenSecrets website, more than $115,000 has gone to Red State Productions and Patrick Davis’ consulting company.

In October, Vote2ReduceDebt parted ways with Davis. By then, records show, the super PAC had paid more than $875,000 – almost a third of its total spending – to companies and organizations owned or operated by Davis and Federici or their associates.

Both declined to be interviewed by ProPublica. In a recent interview with a conservative commentator for the Daily Caller, they said they are preparing the Person to Person PAC for the 2016 cycle. The host asked Patrick Davis if he believes that some conservative groups exist not to affect elections but to bilk donors.

“There is a problem, but Person to Person PAC is not participating in the problem,” Davis said.

Federici directed listeners to the group’s website, where they could log on and donate.

Mitchell, Patrick Davis’s lawyer, denied that Davis and Federici falsified reimbursement requests, faked phone banking events or were dishonest with Vote2ReduceDebt staff.

In fact, Mitchell described Federici as a whistleblower who took on dishonest employees within the PAC. She described one instance in which a PAC state director with a suspended license was secretly using one of the group’s employees as a chauffeur for five weeks.

“One lesson Tali learned from the experience of being dragged into the Abramoff mess was to be very cautious and to ask questions,” Mitchell said. “That was in large part what led her to blow the whistle… before a problem was created and funds were misused.”

Mitchell said Patrick Davis still does not understand why Vote2ReduceDebt terminated his consulting contract. “Had Person to Person PAC been allowed to complete the deployment project,” she said, it would have “met and exceeded” its promised volunteer numbers. Mitchell said Patrick Davis was correct in reporting the money as a contribution, and it was Vote2ReduceDebt that reported the payment incorrectly.

The breakdown of his super PAC has left Ken Davis with some ambivalence about entering election politics.

In a brief interview, he declined to discuss the allegations that he had been duped. He did acknowledge that he may have been in over his head and that he’s not sure the group had the impact he desired.

“I’m convinced there’s a lot of people that jumped into politics with the idea that they’re gonna make a change in the world and they’ve found out it ain’t that easy,” Davis said. “Just because you think it’s needed doesn’t mean you can make it happen.”

Help us investigate: Have a tip about campaign finance? Email robert.faturechi@propublica.org.

history commons

April 4, 2001: Environmentalists Allowed to Meet with Cheney’s Energy Task Force

Representatives of 13 environmentalist groups meet with officials from Vice President Cheney’s energy task force (the National Energy Policy Development Group—see May 16, 2001). Since late January, some 40 task force meetings have been held, all with oil and energy company executives and lobbyists (see Before January 20, 2001, After January 20, 2001, Mid-February, 2001, Mid-February, 2001,March 5, 2001, March 20, 2001, March 21, 2001, March 22, 2001, April 12, 2001. April 17, 2001, and April 17, 2001 and After). Today is the one day where environmental groups are allowed to have any input. Anna Aurilio of the US Public Interest Group will later say, “It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us.” (Notably, the only people ever identified as “lobbyists” by the task force to the press are the representatives from the environmental groups from today’s meeting.) Their input is neither wanted nor used; an initial draft of the task force’s report has already been prepared and President Bush has already been briefed on its contents. The names of the various officials, executives, lobbyists, and representatives who meet with the task force will not be released for six years (see July 18, 2007). Until this meeting, the only environmentalist group to meet with the Cheney task force has been the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, founded in 1998 by conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and Gale Norton, now the Bush administration’s Secretary of the Interior. That group is now run by Italia Federici, described by the Washington Post as “socially involved” with Norton’s deputy, J. Steven Griles. [DUBOSE AND BERNSTEIN, 2006, PP. 18;WASHINGTON POST, 7/18/2007]

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, J. Steven Griles, US Public Interest Group,National Energy Policy Development Group, Italia Federici, Anna Aurilio, Grover Norquist, Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, George W. Bush, Gale A. Norton

Timeline Tags: US Environmental Record

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=gale_a._norton

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Italia Federici

Political Aide to Gale Norton

• Abramoff directed $500,000 to a Federici-founded group in exchange for political favors.

• Introduced Abramoff to J. Steven Griles, with whom she was romantically involved.

• Convicted of tax evasion, obstruction of justice.

Italia Federici founded the Council of Republican for Environmental Advocacy with Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Norton brought Federici into DOI as a political aide. Federici was also romantically linked to J. Steven Griles, who she introduced to Jack Abramoff, a college friend. Abramoff directed about $500,000 to CREA in exchange for political favors from Federici, stating in an email that Federici’s group was “our access to Norton.” Federici was eventually charged with tax evasion and obstruction during Senate investigations of the Abramoff scandal. In 2007, she was sentenced to two months in a half way house and four years of probation.

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we reported last week that Federici was helping organize Colorado for Gingrich, yet no mainstream press picked up on our report. We received only a single email from someone digging further into the story.

So we'll go ahead and break the story wide open.

Federici, who worked on Gale Norton's 1996 US Senate campaign in Colorado, pled guilty in 2007 to tax evasion and obstruction of a Senate investigation into the Abramoff lobbying scandal. She was sentenced to two months in a halfway house, four years of probation and ordered to pay more than $74,000 in restitution.

She was sentenced on December 14, 2007, meaning her four-year probation ended only weeks before the 2012 Iowa caucus.

Since our original report we've had a second source confirm Federici's involvement with the Gingrich campaign.

We reported on Federici’s involvement with the Gingrich campaign in a post about the former House Speaker’s campaign operation in Colorado, which was ramping up in anticipation of Tuesday’s Republican precinct caucuses.

Even with Federici's assistance, Gingrich fared poorly in Colorado, coming in third with 12.79% of the vote.

Ms. Federici has had a relationship withSpeaker Gingrich going back many years. A March 1, 2000 story fromThe Hill newspaper noted that Gingrich was the keynote speaker at the inaugural fundraiser for the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), the group co-founded by Federici and later tied to the Abramoff investigation.  

Federici co-founded CREA with former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton in 1997, here in Colorado. The group then incorporated in Washington, DC in 2000, operating primarily on donations.

Court documents reveal that Federici introduced Jack Abramoff to Steven Griles, who she was dating at the time, one week before Griles was nominated to be the deputy secretary of the Department of Interior (DOI). Soon after that introductory meeting, Abramoff and his clients became contributors of CREA, donating approximately $500,000 between March 2001 and May 2003.

Many of Abramoff’s clients were subject to DOI oversight, including Native American tribes either operating, or interested in operating, gaming operations on designated Federal land.

Federici served as a conduit between Abramoff and Griles, including communicating with Griles and Abramoff about how to stop Indian tribe casinos from opening in areas that would compete with other Indian tribe clients of Abramoff.

Griles was sentenced to ten months in prison and fined $30,000 in 2007.

Federici pled guilty on tax evasion and obstructing a Senate investigation into the matter. She admitted that she made “materially false and misleading statements” to the US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs that likely limited the Committee’s ability to understand the full scope of Abramoff’s contact with Griles.

In her testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in 2005 Federici received a now infamous grilling from Senators John McCain and Byron Dorgan.

McCain’s statement at the beginning of the hearing read: “In fact, documents obtained in the course of the investigation suggest that Mr. Abramoff might have had his tribal clients pay so much because he perceived that CREA’s president, Italia Federici, would help him get inside information about, and possibly influence, tribal issues pending at the Department of the Interior.”

You can see highlights from her testimony after the jump.

Written by Italia Federici — Reprinted With Permission

Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Ten Years Ago

By Italia Federici

This month — May 17, 2011 to be exact — marks the tenth anniversary of the Bush administration’s :{:{National Energy Policy report:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-style:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffff66;"):}::(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-style:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:, referred to colloquially as the product of the “Cheney Energy Task Force.” In fact, it was the product of the National Energy Policy Development Group, a body headed by Vice President Cheney that included thirteen cabinet members, administrators and senior administration staff whose positions were such that they held sway over America’s energy future.

This report was amongst the very first undertakings of the Bush Administration. White House meetings with NEPD Group non-member-advisors began in February 2001 a mere three weeks into the new presidency. The reason for the Bush administration’s sense of urgency was the then crumbling of America’s energy infrastructure and the need for new domestic exploration to meet the country’s energy needs. That crumbling continues today. Here’s why:

The report’s stated goal in its Overview was to make recommendations that would alleviate a number of America’s energy problems citing that “Many families face energy bills two to three times higher than they were a year ago. [...] Some employers must lay off workers or curtail production to absorb the rising cost of energy. Drivers across America are paying higher and higher gasoline prices.”

The report made 105 policy recommendations aimed at fixing the above mentioned problems including recommending that the U.S. build new refineries, engage in new oil and gas exploration, construct new nuclear power plants, plus invest in renewable energy sources.

At the time of its release, so-called environmentalists and liberals from both parties on Capitol Hill vigorously resisted the recommendations in the report. These obstructionists were most vocal in their opposition to new exploration, the construction of new nuclear facilities and the construction of new refineries.

Key among their talking points was that America need not heed the recommendations in the NEPD Group report about domestic drilling because “it would take 10 years for any crude to be delivered to refineries.” Two of the Congressional leaders who voted against domestic exploration at that time were Congresswoman Pelosi and Senator Reid. Well, even under this 10-year worst case scenario, we’d have that oil now, not $5.00 a gallon gas. Are you better off today than you were ten years ago for their “leadership?”

In July 2001, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, one of the least informed pundits yet greatest obstructers, told Dennis Miller in a televised and taped interview that America need not drill here at home because gas would always be $2.00 a gallon. As the Sierra Club’s official spokesman, Pope said the Sierra Club would block all domestic exploration efforts because all the oil America needed was “sitting under Saudi Arabia.” His objections to domestic drilling were tied to America’s role in “global warming.” In recent years the “science” underpinning the basis of his global warming claims has been shown to be fraudulent. Despite this climate science fraud, and even after the terrible events of September 11, 2001, he never issued a retraction or changed policy course. Are you better off today than you were ten years ago for his “leadership?”

Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on acronyms. As such, maybe May 2011 should be called “Gasoline Accountability and Sanity” or G.A.S. month, whereby the people who ignored the NEPD Group recommendations and who are responsible for the current $5.00 a gallon gasoline debacle are held to account. High home energy costs, layoffs, unaffordable gasoline prices – America didn’t get here by accident or without warning. Certain members of Congress and NGO leaders steered America here, knowing very well what the result would be. Dick Cheney told them.

Italia Federici was a non-member-advisor to the National Energy Policy Development Group. Her upcoming expose of the modern environment movement, Broken Trail, is scheduled for release in early 2012.You can follow her on Twitter @Italia_Federici

Filed under: energy, harry reid, nancy pelosi, solar, wind

« Climate Depot home

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ducked subpoena, griles solo, memory problems

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3181148

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dkos

TUE APR 03, 2007 AT 08:56 AM PDT

Another DoJ "target letter": Could this take down the GOP money-machine?

bymbwFollow

My friend Dengre emailed me yesterday, asking if I'd read the latest CREW announcement on my favorite criminal subject, Italia Federici.  Seeing that we'd spent Sunday travelling from Mojave NP back to the coast at Malibu, and then Monday running errands all day, I'd missed it.  Bad me.

But while CREW had the basics, their source for the info, the Legal Times had the real low down:

Federici is Latest Target in Abramoff Probe

By Emma Schwartz

Legal Times

April 2, 2007

Italia Federici, the one-time girlfriend of a convicted former senior official at the Interior Department, is a target of the ongoing federal influence-peddling investigation into the activities of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to court documents obtained by Legal Times.

In a letter dated Jan. 19, the Justice Department informed Federici, founder of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, that she was a target of the federal probe.

"The investigation is focused on the allegedly illegal manner in which you operated the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy," wrote Stephanie Evans, a trial attorney in the department’s Tax Division.

The reason the Tax Division is investigating Italia Federici and her organization, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, aka, the Committee for Republican Environmental Advocates, aka, Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates, aka Renew our Urban Centers, is that CREA's filings to the IRS indicate the organization received no income from 2001 until 2006.  Of course, it came to light during the Abramoff scandal and subsequent Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings that CREA accepted upwards of $500,000 in donations from Jack Abramoff's tribal clients.  None of those contributions were reported.

What the Legal Times and other traditional (and non-traditional) media outlets seem to miss is that Federici was way more than Steven Griles' sometime girlfriend, someone who benefitted, politically, financially and socially, from that relationship.  In fact, I would argue that Federici was the key to Griles entry into the Norton Interior Department, as she knew Secretary Norton much better than Griles, who had merely worked under James Watt with Norton back in the Reagan Administration for a few years.  It's clear from many of the CREA emails released in the Abramoff investigation that Federici's access reached not only into Norton's office (she regularly checked Norton's schedule with her personal assistant) but into the Department of Energy, where early on in the Bush Administration, before Griles was even confirmed, she was meeting with key officials.

Federici's ties to powerful people went well beyond Griles and Norton.  A former TV journalist from Connecticut, she cut her political teeth on Jeb Bush's failed 1994 gubernatorial campaign, and was a bright enough star to be sent out to work on Norton's failed 1996 Senate campaign.  Afterwards, Federici received her formal training as a GOP operative at the highly respected Republican Leadership Program of the Rockies.  Soon thereafter, 27 year-old Federici formed the Committee of Repubican Environmental Advocates, with Gale Norton, Grover Norquist (who had also helped out on Norton's Senate race), and DC-fundraising diva Julie Finley on top of the extraction-industry front-group's letterhead; but it was Federici who ran the ship from the beginning.

Very early on, CREA was on Texas Governor George W. Bush's radar.  From "An Inventory of Governor George W. Bush Policy Office Records at the Texas State Archives, Staff memoranda,  January-October, 1997":

John Howard

[4 folders]

[Subjects include: emission reduction and grandfathered programs; air quality; environmental cleanup programs; Southwest Travis County Water District; water planning; water rights; groundwater; vehicle emissions testing; Federal Safe Drinking Water Act; Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission; Texas Water Development Board; Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates; Environmental Protection Agency; run-off waters; water quality; New Mexico; environmental issues with Mexico; ozone; and carbon pollution]

In fact, this is the earliest citation I've found so far for CREA.

In 1998, CREA moved from Colorado to Washington, amid much pomp and circumstance with the reigning Republican elite.  From a 2001 WaPo article on Norton (a repeat cite from a post I wrote on CREA last spring):

On a June evening in 1998, in the big ballroom of the J.W. Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue, Gale A. Norton hosted the national kickoff for an organization she founded that is now called, after several name changes, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy.

To understand why environmentalists in Washington are so worried about President-elect Bush's choice of Norton for interior secretary -- and why conservatives are applauding the nomination -- CREA is a good place to start.

The organization was conceived by Norton, then the outgoing Colorado attorney general. Its purpose: to confront an "overriding problem," as its first mailings put it, that "over the last two decades, Democrats have created the impression that they are the defenders of the environment while Republicans are environmental destroyers. Our bad guy image hampers the election of Republican candidates and makes it difficult to promote common-sense policies."

Norton, through CREA, vowed to do something about that. The June gathering was part of her plan. The gathering included a Who's Who of GOP powerhouses in Congress.

The guest of honor was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.). The keynote address was delivered by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.). The sponsors for the gala that night included the National Coal Council, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the National Mining Association, the Chlorine Chemical Council and the political consulting firm of Karl Rove, one of Bush's closest advisers.

So what else happened when Federici moved to DC?  From Steve Griles' criminal docs from the DoJ (Organization A being CREA, Person A being Federici):

Organization A," which purports to be a tax-exempt organization under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(4), was founded in 1997 and run by "Person A." Since its inception, Organization A operated through contributions from donors. In or about June 1998, Person A set up Organization A in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, GRILES took an active interest in Organization A and began assisting Person A in raising funds to support Organization A until GRILES was confirmed as DOT Deputy Secretary. From sometime in 1998, and continuing through early or mid 2003, GRILES had a personal and, at times, romantic relationship with Person A. GRILES and Person A remained close friends for some time after their romantic relationship ended.

Federici was apparently very successful at making friends.  A January 2000 invitation-only reception for outgoing GOP Chair Haley Barbour was hosted by CREA on the Hill, and subsequent Chair Jim Nicholson co-hosted a party with CREA for Gale Norton in March, 2001. At the 2000 Republican Convention in Boston, CREA co-sponsored an event with Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci. CREA was invited to many US government sponsored environmental conferences, as well as some international ones. Federici gave numerous talks and even had a paper published in the Ripon Society's quarterly magazine. DC's most influential Republican socialite, Julie Finley, sat on the board and hosted monthly dinner parties for the organization.  The Legal Time's article cited above indicates that Federici was willed $10,000 by Margaret Alexander Parker, the GOP's uber-fundraiser who died last November from leukemia at age 48.  Federici may currently be too great a political liability for Republican moneymen (and women) nowadays, but this obviously wasn't always the case.

But the GOP should be afraid, very afraid, should Federici turn state's evidence.  Much more than her old boyfriend, Griles, Federici has the potential to bring down many more with her.  Julie Finley, a former member of CREA'S board of directors and hostess of many dinners between Interior officials and business leaders with interests in the Department, is currently the United States Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a job she received, ironically, just as the CREA-Norquist parts of the Abramoff scandal were breaking, conveniently getting Finley out of town.  However, Finley's previous resume is chock-full of uber-insider GOP goodies:  Founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, the WISH List (Women in the Senate and House), the U.S. Committee on NATO, Chair of the Project on Transitional Democracies, Steeing committee for the Republican Leadership Council, and according to her official government bio, served "as DC Republican Party Chairman from 1992 through 2000 and as DC Republican National Committeewoman from 2000 through 2004. She has also served in a number of capacities on the Republican National Committee", including as co-chair of the Republican National Committee's major fundraising arm, Team 100.

Even potentially more damaging, however, is Federici's long-standing personal and professional relationship with Grover Norquist.  Norquist was one of CREA's initial founders back in 1997, and helped moved Federici to Washington.  CREAs official office was for some time located within Norquist's own ATF offices, and Federici used Norquist's home address as her own in contributions reported to the FEC.  It was Federici's friendship with Norquist which got her hooked up with Abramoff in 2001.  With all the indications that Norquist actively participated in Abramoff's influence and access-peddling schemes, he has much to worry should Federici sing.  Frankly, I'm surprised he's not personally footing her attorney bills, forcing her instead to turn to the Public Defender's Office.

Then there's Federici's connections with Barbor and Nicholson, as well as numerous Republican Congressmen who actively supported CREA's activities.  Should unredacted Abramoff emails ever be released, the names of those Congressmen will be made public.

(As an aside, with Federici now being named at a target by DoJ for tax purposes, co-Abramoff-money-launderer Amy Ridenour should be sweating bullets.)

It is a mistake to underestimate the importance of the DoJ's investigation of Italia Federici.  The question we should all be asking ourselves, will the caged bird sing?

You can read much, much more on Federici at my home site, where I've been following this subject in detail since 2004.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/04/03/319024/-Another-DoJ-target-letter-Could-this-take-down-the-GOP-money-machine

==

wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italia_Federici

Italia Federici (born August 12, 1969), the former president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA). Federici was also a political aide to Secretary of the Interior and CREA co-founder Gale Norton.[1] She pleaded guilty in June 2007 to tax evasionand obstructing the United States Senate investigation into the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal and was sentenced to four years probation.[2][3][4]

Contents

  [hide] 

Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy

Federici founded CREA with Norton and Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, a college friend of Abramoff, in 1997 with money Federici inherited;[5] The organization was also funded by, and supported the goals of, mining and other industries.

Abramoff involvement

Federici introduced Jack Abramoff to Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles in March 2001, just before Griles started at the Department of the Interior.[5] Abramoff donated more than $400,000 to CREA, after which time she allegedly began using her connections with Griles to influence him to make decisions beneficial to Abramoff's tribal benefactors.[6]

In emails, Abramoff claimed that "she is critical"[7] to his work with the Department of Interior, especially with regards to preventing the Jena Band of Choctaws Indian Tribe from creating a casino, that would take money away from one of Abramoff's "core tribes". A February 18, 2003, email from Abramoff to Federici said "...This will be a PR disaster as you can imagine, especially if for some reason Interior agrees to approve this deal. McCrery and Vitter (the other R's in the delegation) are furious beyond belief. This is going to get really ugly. Please let Steve know about this. Thanks so much Italia!".[8] The email referred to Griles, who is reported to have been romantically connected to Federici.[9]

Federici also pleaded guilty to failure to file tax returns from 2001 - 2003; Furthermore, she did not pay income tax from 2001 through 2003.

In December 2007, Federici was sentenced to four years probation, and $77,243 in restitution of back taxes.

External links

References

  1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Michael Scherer (November 18, 2005). "The greening of Italia Federici". Salon.
  2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Matt Apuzzo (June 6, 2007). "New Charges Filed in Abramoff Probe". Associated Press.
  3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Mark Heilprin (June 8, 2007). "GOP fundraiser pleads guilty in probe". Associated Press.
  4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Susan Schmidt (December 15, 2007). "Republican With Links to Abramoff Is Sentenced". Washington Post.
  5. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italia_Federici#cite_ref-plea_5-1) Mike Soraghan (June 7, 2007). "Norton aide cops a plea". The Hill.
  6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Senate Indian Affairs Hearings, testimony by Italia Federici (video)". Senate Indian Affairs Committee. November 17, 2005.
  7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Susan Schmidt (November 18, 2005). "Abramoff Witness Frustrates Panel: E-Mails Suggest She Was Lobbyist's Connection to Interior Official". Washington Post. p. A08.
  8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Susan Schmidt (March 13, 2005). "Casino Bid Prompted High-Stakes Lobbying". Washington Post.
  9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Edmund L. Andrews (March 23, 2007). "Ex-Deputy of Interior Dept. Pleads Guilty". New York Times.

[show]

Jack Abramoff scandal

Categories: 

==

srcwtch

Italia Federici is the president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA). "Federici is a former political aide to Interior Secretary Gale Norton and a confidante of other department officials, most notably former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles." [1]

Contents[hide]

Profiles

"In the mid-1990s, a woman named Italia Federici worked on former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton's failed bid for the U.S. Senate. Then the two women teamed up to create an organization called the Coalition of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy. ... The group [is] now called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy," reported the Rocky Mountain News.

SourceWatch Resources

External links

By Italia Federici

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=GOPUSA

Articles & Commentary

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Italia_Federici"

Categories: Scandals | Corruption

greening of IF

salon

Italia Federici is a minor Republican player in Washington, the sort of dime-a-dozen functionary who can build a career trading favors in backrooms and producing political campaigns for moneyed interests. Her specialty is the environment. She leads a conservative front group called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, or CREA, a tiny outfit, originally founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, that argues it is healthy for forests to clear-cut trees, good for the air to weaken air-quality controls, and “environmentally responsible” to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness.

For the past five years, Federici has limited her public activities to supporting President Bush’s environmental plans. She claims that traditional environmentalists, groups like the Sierra Club and Democrats like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., are dishonest and deceptive. But that is just the public face of Federici. In private, she has played a very different role in Washington, one that has now put her in the middle of one of the largest political ethics scandals in a decade.

On Thursday, she appeared before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to explain under oath her relationship with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist whose exploits have already led to a handful of criminal indictments. For critics of Republican politics, the Abramoff investigations are a gift that keeps on giving. They reveal a world of ethical violations, illegal money transfers, perjury and graft that flowed between some of the biggest names in Republican politics. Already, Abramoff has been charged with fraud; a top White House official, David Safavian, has been charged with perjury; and another former White House official, Timothy Flanigan, has withdrawn from a Senate confirmation process.

Abramoff’s dealings have thrown ethical clouds over a number of Republican heavyweights, including Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas., evangelical activist Ralph Reed, and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist. And the investigation is far from over.

Under the direction of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee has uncovered evidence that suggests Federici entered into an unspoken deal with Abramoff, who is accused of stealing millions of dollars from his Native American clients. He funneled nearly $500,000 in donations from these clients to her environmental organization. In exchange, Federici became his advocate in the inner sanctum of the Bush administration, offering him access to at least two of her close friends, Norton and Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles. “Ms. Federici would help get inside information about and possibly influence tribal issues within the Interior,” explained Sen. McCain, at the start of the hearing.

For her part, Federici flatly denied all allegations that she had done anything untoward. “We provided excellent environmental advocacy consistent with our mission,” she said of her work with CREA, which is registered as a nonprofit. “I get a lot of unsolicited e-mail, and I am helpful to all of my friends.”

Sitting before the Senate panel, Federici had the bearing of a quiet, sympathetic elementary school teacher. She wore her blond hair loose over her shoulders, and spoke in soft tones. At one point she portrayed herself as an honest subordinate who had found herself working with unethical friends. “Jack was close to 50, a man and a high-dollar donor,” she said of his blunt e-mails to her. “I did not feel comfortable correcting his vernacular.” But she gave no ground to her inquisitors. She said, instead, that she believed the committee’s staff had engaged in a smear campaign against her. She called McCain’s investigation a “witch hunt,” adding that she believed the senator might hold a grudge because she had opposed a bipartisan bill on air quality that McCain had sponsored.

McCain seemed to take pleasure in the suggestion that he was the one bending ethical rules. He focused instead on the evidence he had compiled. He described multiple e-mails in which Federici responded to Abramoff’s requests for help lobbying Interior officials. In April of 2003, for example, Abramoff asked her to find out about a procedural change proposed by the department that had upset his clients. “Hi Jack: I will definitely see what I can find out,” she wrote back, before immediately changing the topic. “I hate to bug you, but is there any news about a possible contribution…?”

“Any objective observer would see that there is a connection between contributions to your organization and the work that you would be doing on behalf of Mr. Abramoff,” McCain said.

“I attached a second unrelated thought about an environmental project,” Federici protested.

“Since your answers are so bizarre, I won’t continue,” said McCain a few minutes later. “I will let others make the judgment.”

The e-mails released by the committee on Thursday certainly presented a damning case. At minimum, it appears Abramoff believed he was buying access to the Interior Department through Federici. He claimed to colleagues that Federici had “juice” at the agency. He claimed that CREA functioned as “Norton’s main group outside the department.” He offered Federici skybox seats at Redskins games and paid the bill for her meals and cocktail parties at his downtown restaurant, Signatures.

At the same time, Federici appeared to be catering to Abramoff’s every wish. She arranged meetings, requested photo opportunities, delivered memos and newspaper articles to Interior officials. She even organized Georgetown dinner parties, under the cover of CREA, so Abramoff’s clients could meet with Norton and Griles. “Thanks for all you do for my clients, the cause and me personally,” Abramoff wrote her in a 2002 e-mail.

“When my friends reach out to me and ask me to help them with things, I never turn around and say why don’t you just do it yourself,” Federici said, adding that she paid for her own cellphone to facilitate this process. “I believed at the time that the reason Jack was giving us money is because he was a very generous Republican contributor,” she said at another point in the hearing.

“That is unbelievable,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who is co-chairman of the committee.

There was far less disagreement about what Federici had done with the tribal money she collected from Abramoff’s clients. CREA spent it on initiatives that had nothing to do with the Native American tribes, but much to do with furthering President Bush’s agenda. In April 2002, for example, CREA ran a $40,000 full-page ad in the Washington Post praising the environmental merits of the president’s plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“We are also going to do something mean to Senator John Kerry,” Federici wrote Abramoff, a few days before the ad ran. She then described a video CREA had packaged that showed Sen. Kerry leaving an Earth Day celebration and stepping into a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle. She sent the video to at least two television programs on the Fox News Network, “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity and Colmes.” “I am letting EVERYONE know that you are the only reason we have the funding to do this,” she gushed to Abramoff in the same e-mail.

At the same time, e-mails show that Abramoff and Federici plotted to use environmental causes to help Abramoff’s gambling clients. In December 2002, Abramoff proposed to Federici that she encourage the Interior Department to “say that they are not satisfied with the Environmental Impact Report” of a proposed casino in Michigan that would compete with one of Abramoff’s clients. “This is a direct assault on our guys,” Abramoff wrote to Federici. Eight minutes later, she wrote back to say she would contact Griles. “I will call him asap,” she said. The casino was eventually approved, after a protracted delay.

Sen. Dorgan compared Federici’s story to a fairy tale. “You know what bothers me?” Dorgan asked at the end of the hearing. “It’s pretty clear that this is one of the most disgusting tales of greed and avarice, and perhaps fraud and stealing. It’s unbelievable what we have uncovered here. It’s almost sickening to see what we have uncovered. And you come to our table and say, ‘Oh, gosh, this is just about friendships.’

“Somehow none of this adds up,” he continued. “This committee, in my judgment, has had people testify, and, in my judgment, some of the testimony was fraudulent. We need to find out who, because there are consequences to that.”

Dorgan may well have his way. The Senate Finance Committee is beginning its own investigation into the use of nonprofits like CREA by lobbyists like Abramoff. The Justice Department is in the midst of a wide-ranging investigation of Abramoff’s lobbying operation. Sen. McCain has suggested the Internal Revenue Service should mount its own investigation. And Dorgan said he will ask for another hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee.

No date has yet been set. But it is clear that Federici, a backroom player in big-money politics, will not have the last word.

Michael Scherer is Salon's Washington correspondent. Read his other articles here.

MORE MICHAEL SCHERER.

http://www.salon.com/2005/11/18/federici_2/

wow

**If the Left Gave a Damn, They'd Drill: How the Left is Selling-Out its Entire (Purported) Base ....**

Climate Depot ^| April 18, 2011 | Italia Federici -- Marc Morano – 

Posted on 4/18/2011, 1:01:00 PM by **Ernest_at_the_Beach**

If the Left Gave a Damn, They'd Drill: How the Left is Selling-Out its Entire (Purported) Base on Behalf of the “Green” Lobby

By Italia Federici

In his Commentary Magazine article of April 11, 2011 Peter Wehner answers the question “Why We Should Give a Damn” in response to an article that raised the question of why the US should spill American blood to help the Afghan people. Wehner's piece addresses why ambivalence toward suffering people is unacceptable, even if those suffering people are half a world away.

As part of his case for compassion, Wehner recalls the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan and writes that “...Jesus was teaching that love and mercy are not restricted by national boundaries.” Wehner is not suggesting that the US intervene in the instance of every case of suffering in the world. He writes:

“Now this ethic is not only intensely difficult to uphold in our daily lives, it's extremely unclear how to translate it into public policy. A nation of limited resources cannot help everyone in need. We need to prioritize our commitments, including what we owe to our fellow citizens. And the compassion we might act on as individuals should not always express itself in action by the state.”

Agreed. We should, however, absolutely expect the state to “vote with our dollars” in a way that mirrors our national values. Along those lines I have one simple policy recommendation that would not only address “what we owe to our fellow citizens,” but what we owe the rest of the world as well. The United States must drill and mine its own energy resources.

Differing World Views

Crippling gasoline prices take their toll on American families and businesses. Conservatives assert that domestic exploration will lower energy costs for individuals and employers. Democrats and liberals know this is true. But the ideological divide between smaller-government, greater-personal-freedom-advocating conservatives, and wealth-distribution-advocating, nanny-staters is un-crossable with this monetary argument.

Here is why. Liberals are perfectly happy to see energy prices rise. They believe blocking domestic exploration, and thereby forcing the rising energy costs we see today, will benefit environmental quality in several ways. First, they disapprove of the act of exploration as inherently dirty and anti-environment. Second, higher energy costs, in their own words, will force conservation. Third, they hope higher energy costs will cripple manufacturing (another dirty activity) and force a transition – if even a violently unfair and callous one – to a “clean energy economy.” They want the economic pain that accompanies the lack of domestic exploration.

Liberals largely view the constituencies inconvenienced or bankrupted by this agenda as money-hungry, eco-loathing, resource-hogging American imperialists – otherwise known to them as conservatives. What they ignore is that the groups most harmed by their anti-domestic exploration agenda are members of their self-described liberal base: the poor, elderly, women, gays, union members, and children. They abandon these constituents on behalf of one constituency alone, the environmental lobby, yet their anti-drilling agenda is bad for the environment, too. As we approach yet another Earth Day, let's look at what is really going on in the name of environmentalism.

Voting with Our Wallets

It's simple. When we do not drill in the US we are forced to import oil from other countries.

Paul Chesser in his very good March 17, 2011 post for the American Spectator blog publishes a handy list of exactly who we fund by refusing to engage in our own domestic resource production. The beneficiaries listed are the National Iranian Oil Company, Saudi Arabian Oil Company, Iraq National Oil Company, Qatar General Petroleum Corporation, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (UAE), Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Petroleos de Venezuela.S.A., Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, National Oil Company (Libya), and Sonatrach (Algeria). These are state-owned entities we now fund to the tune of 60 cents of each petroleum dollar spent in the US.

First let's look at what affect this practice has on women and gays.

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the State Department's new Women and Public Service Initiative. In her remarks Clinton referenced recent Arab world uprisings and acknowledged that countries “where girls and women are oppressed, where their rights are ignored or violated, [...] are not only unstable, but hostile to our own interests.” In other words, these are not merely cultural differences. Perhaps her inclusion of that sentiment in the context of the Arab world has something to do with sharia law.

Each of the countries listed above with the sole exception of Venezuela is governed under the rule of sharia law. Sharia law demands the execution of homosexuals and permits husbands to hit their wives. It calls for the stoning to death of fornicators and adulterers, although far more women are executed for these infractions than men. A woman's testimony in court only counts as half a man's testimony. Two weeks ago the international news media was rightly outraged by the flogging to death of a 14 year old rape victim who was found guilty of “fornicating” under sharia law. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident. According to The Council on Foreign Relations“...the UN estimates thousands of women are killed annually in the name of family honor... Other practices that are woven into the sharia debate, such as female genital mutilation, adolescent marriages, polygamy, and gender-biased inheritance rules, elicit as much controversy.”

Venezuela sanctions its own set of abuses. The State Department's Human Rights Report on Venezuela states that “violence against women; trafficking in persons” are ongoing problems. It continues, “Although the law prohibits discrimination based on gender, disability... discrimination against women, persons with disabilities...was a problem. Prostitution is legal. The country was reported to be a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor.”

Clearly the policy of buying oil from these countries only serves to enrich states whose human rights violations against women and homosexuals is well documented – even by our own government and the United Nations – hardly conservative sources. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to safeguard, not undermine, the rights we hold dear.

What We Owe Our Fellow Citizens

The poor and the elderly pay a disproportionate share of their incomes for energy. A gallon of gas costs the same amount whether one falls economically under the poverty limit, is dependent on a social security check, or is a millionaire. Unlike the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) there is no financial assistance program for filling the gas tank.

The burden of high energy costs for families and businesses has reached the main stream media. The ABC Evening News lead story on April 11, 2011 was impending five dollar a gallon gas. Two critical lines of reasoning were raised in the story, ones that conservatives have warned about for years.

First, a young mother standing in front of a gas pump casually explained that in order to accommodate the rising gasoline prices she has cut back on “extras” for her child including reducing the child's music lessons to one day a week. Next, a Moody's economist was given approximately a nanosecond to explain that rising gas prices were in jeopardy of up-ending any economic recovery that might be underway. Then, without any further discussion, the next story of the day was up. Just that fast, the trickle down pain that is felt by families, children and the economy was glossed over.

Music lessons, a family outing to a baseball game, a weekend trip to a national park, all unaffordable for tens of millions of Americans. Forget renting an RV or going to Disney World. Quality of life is eroding, one simple pleasure, one night at the movies, one extra-curricular activity at a time.

Rising gas prices are a part of a one two punch that also includes the disappearance of the “family wage earning” job. Enter union members. A “family wage” job is union speak for a job that pays enough for one spouse or parent to support a household – somewhere in the 60k plus range depending on the region of the country. These are usually manufacturing jobs or jobs in energy intensive industries like transportation, or in the energy sector. As energy costs rise, those jobs disappear. The energy sector jobs that are unionized are largely domestic exploration jobs. Drilling is a unionized industry. Mining is a unionized industry. High gasoline prices harm the transportation sector which is heavily unionized. Even many of the manufacturing jobs lost throughout the country are unionized.

We owe it to our fellow citizens to develop our own resources. Choking off domestic exploration is devastating families, “family wage” jobs (regardless of whether they are union jobs or not), and the economy.

No Environmental Benefit

In order to justify their callousness toward economic suffering, the Left lies. First, they say this reduction in domestic exploration is good for the environment and second, they assert we are replacing dirty energy with clean energy. Untrue and untrue. Forty years ago David Brower, the founder of Earth Day, admonished Americans to Think Globally Act Locally. If the Left followed its own advice, we'd be drilling in the United States in order to save the planet.

In Nigeria, Shell Oil estimates saboteurs were responsible for the loss 14000 metric tons of oil into the Niger Delta in 2010 alone. In reporting about the capping of the well in the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, Newsweek wrote that in Nigeria oil spills “occur almost weekly”, that it is estimated there have been 7,000 oil spills in Nigeria in the past forty years, and that while the US gets 10% of our oil from Nigeria, we hear nothing about this environmental devastation.

Similar accounts exist regarding exploration in Algeria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, the rest. US environmental oversight and constraints are among the most stringent in the world. Not drilling in the US for environmental reasons in favor of drilling in Nigeria, Venezuela and the Middle East is ludicrous. Every drop of oil we import comes at an environmental cost exponentially larger for the planet than is in any way necessary or justifiable. In fact, it's a slap in Mother Nature's face, a statement that while we can explore responsibility, we choose not to.

The Left will argue that traditional dirty energy sources are being replaced with a new clean energy supply. Wrong. Wind, solar, bi-fuels are all heavily subsidized by the government and are light on delivery. Subsidizing industries does not render them functional. The problem with solar and ethanol subsidization is outlined very well by David Kreutzer for the Heritage Foundation here, including rising prices for consumers, solar energy's lack of reliability and transmission capability, and the fact that market manipulation in the form of government subsidies and mandates can lead to bankruptcy for the companies on the receiving end.

The solar subsidization experiment is failing in Spain and in China. Once the government handout stops, the layoffs start. Add to that the short life cycle of a shoddily made Chinese solar panel and solar energy is in short supply while solar waste piles up. Another downside for the environment? Each impotent solar panel tossed away contains toxic cadmium and heavy metals like lead and mercury.

Wind is equally unimpressive. A recent UK study of its wind industry found that wind farms were “working at just 21% of capacity.” Environmental pioneer James Lovelock, the leader of the CFC ban in the 1970s, the father of the Gaia theory, cautions against the political-correctness bullying that is engaged in by renewable industry pushers and adds “If wind energy were the one practical and affordable answer to global warming then I would grit my teeth at the loss of the countryside and accept it. But I know that windfarms are no answer to global warming...”

So, why the large government handouts to the renewable energy sector? Perhaps the answer lies in this report from the Center for Public Integrity about who gets the US government's renewable energy subsidies. The recipients appear to be very politically active Obama campaign donors. According to GreenBeat:

“The report suggested that four companies that Steve Westley, a managing partner at clean technology investment firm The Westley Group, has invested in received more than $500 million in loans, grants and stimulus money from the Department of Energy after Westley contributed $500,000 to the Obama campaign. The companies in Westley's portfolio that received federal funding are Tesla Motors, RecycleBank, EdeniQ and Amyris Biotechnologies.

Both Amyris Biotechnologies and Tesla Motors have since gone public. Amyris is valued at $1.2 billion and Tesla Motors is valued at $2.5 billion. Westley said that the companies in his portfolio went through a strict screening process and were awarded each loan based on merit, and that each received the loan before he was an advisor to U.S.Department of Energy secretary Steven Chu, according to the report.”

The US government subsidization strategy has lead to massive handouts to the wind and solar industries, with politically active fund managers making a killing off the backs family wage earners, all with no environmental benefit to tout.

If the Left Cared, They'd Drill

This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Barack Obama called for the US to “drill” in his pre-BP-oil-spill State of the Union Address in January of 2010. Bill Clinton recently called the delay in issuing off-shore drilling permits “ridiculous.” In fact, there was more domestic oil and gas exploration under the Clinton administration than there was under the presidency of George W. Bush.

However, this is a partisan issue. The Democratic party is completely hijacked by the “environmental” siren song. Anything called green, no matter how ineffective or downright insidious, is unthinkingly embraced. They have shown a complete willingness to sell out every other constituent in their base in favor of one group alone: the eco-lobby.

These new no-deal Democrats are willing financial backers of those who summarily execute homosexuals worldwide, they are willing backers of regimes that oppress and murder women, are against the creation of union “family wage” earning jobs, are the enemy of the poor and the elderly and are callous to the effects of economic deprivation upon children. If the Left gave a damn, they'd drill here at home and stop voting with our dollars to support human rights atrocities. They'd drill here at home to help American families and the US economy.

It is incumbent upon activists and political leaders to spend the next eighteen months and beyond communicating this message and righting this wrong. It's what we owe our own citizens and it's what we owe the world.

Italia Federici is the former president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA). Her expose of the modern environmental movement, Broken Trail, will be published next year. You can follow her on Twitter @Italia_Federici